


Most Wonderful Time of the Year

by stifledlaughter



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Deep Dish Nine, Drunken Shenanigans, Holidays, M/M, Ugly Holiday Sweaters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 15:57:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2657870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stifledlaughter/pseuds/stifledlaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep Dish Nine Julian/Garak Christmas/Holiday themed prompts from tumblr. Ugly Christmas sweaters, drunken caroling, wreath-making, and accidental tree destruction. </p><p>Deep Dish Nine AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Most Wonderful Time of the Year

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, it's not even Thanksgiving yet. No, I don't care because I had to write these when the inspiration struck and I'll probably write more Christmas-themed fluff before the season's over. This is only the beginning of a very merry season for these characters, whether or not they want it.  
> I got the idea from the captainasexual's post on tumblr with various Christmas themed AU meetings (just google one of the prompts to find it). Since I wanted to write ones where the characters already knew each other, I altered them a bit, but the general feeling for the ones I selected are still there.  
> Thanks to Lady Yate-xel for making Deep Dish Nine and for the Cardassian holiday themes I added in this one.

**we both wore ugly sweaters to this christmas party because the invitation didn’t say it’s formal**

Tea- check. Book – check. Lights set to dim, but still levels that made reading possible- check. Gentle Cardassian winter solstice melodies playing to provide background ambiance – check.

A perfect evening, if one must be alone, Garak mused.

He settled into the couch, his eyes picking up where he left off in this book-

_Bang! Bang!_

Garak’s eyes flickered up to his door. Very few people would knock on his door in such urgency- or, those that he would not want knocking on the door wouldn’t likely have the mind to knock as much as find their own way in.

“Garak? It’s me! I need your help!”

 _Julian_?

Garak swiftly rose from the couch, unlocking his three door locks and opening the door to find a panicked Julian in a hideous- absolutely _hideous-_ green, white, and red sweater, with what appeared to be an entire detailed winter holiday scene sewed onto it. Garak actually recoiled for a moment in horror.

“Garak, thank god you’re in tonight-“ Julian was panting heavily, as if he had run from some place, and was looking up at Garak like he was his savior.

“Why would you _ever_ put that piece of clothing on your body?” asked Garak with clear, unfiltered disdain. “There are much more suitable winter clothes to wear-“ Dear god, was it- _blinking?_ Were there actual _lights_ sewn into the fabric? On _purpose?_

“It’s the Christmas party at Deep Dish Nine, and they said it was themed, and I thought it was an ugly Christmas sweater theme, but no, it’s formal Christmas in the swinging sixties, and everyone is dressed up, _Garak even Kira is dressed up this never happens_ I can’t go in there wearing this alone-“

Garak frowned. “I’m afraid there is nothing I can loan you that would match that era-“

“No, you don’t have to loan me anything- it’s-“ Julian pulled something out of his bag, a red and white velvet and fur-lined sack that normally would have caught Garak’s fashion-crime senses instantly, had it not been for the frontal assault he was facing. “Can you wear a matching one with me- so I won’t feel as stupid or alone? They said we could bring guests and I know you said you were better off not going at first, but _please I can’t go in there with just me wearing this sweater_.”

“You want me to wear a similarly grotesque sweater so that you don’t stand out as much at the party?” Garak was torn between his ever-present need to aid Julian in whatever he could, and his staunch opposition to anything that put him in the spotlight. Or in that terrible affront to fashion.

“It would mean so much to me, Garak, please, I’ll make it up to you!” While desperation wasn’t necessarily a quality he found attractive, the promise of reciprocation certainly was. “Please please please-“

Garak’s eyes fell to the sweater crumped in Julian’s hands.

 _Was that a melody he heard coming from the sweater?_ Red, white, with touches of green, Garak squinted and saw that there were large, red flowers in the design of the sweater. It seemed that there were blinking lights in this sweater too- in the middle of each flower, and a tinny, beeping song coming out of the sweater.

It was awful. It was one of the most repugnant items Garak had ever laid his eyes on.

Julian looked up at him with huge puppy-dog eyes.

Garak sighed, set aside all the dignity he had ever had, and took the sweater from Julian’s hands.

**you need to stop your drunken caroling outside of my window at 2 am**

“ _Gaaaarrakkk_ ,” sang a voice outside of Garak’s tiny basement window. Garak startled to alertness, his hand snaking to the dresser drawer to pull out his knife-

“ _He’ll be coming down the chimney now, Gaaarrak…”_

Wait. That voice. That was-

_Julian?_

“What time is it?” groaned Garak, glancing at his clock.

_2 a.m._

“Julian, what are you doing?” He peered through the tiny basement window that was situated above his desk. It was only two feet wide and a foot tall, but he could see Julian’s feet kicking around outside of the window. The footsteps were stumbling- he was drunk. And outside in the very, very cold winter.

“Julian, get inside, it’s freezing!” snapped Garak to his window, which he had opened the tiniest bit – _oh that was cold! –_ so that his boyfriend could hear him.

“ _Oh baby it’s cold outside-“_

“Yes, it is, get in here now-“

Julian’s voice changed to sultry. “ _Been an awfully good boy, Garak baby…”_

Garak stopped shouting out the window and paused to consider the implications of that song. There was only one way to answer. It was stupid. It was sentimental.

It was perfect.

“ _So hurry down the stairs tonight_ ,” sang Garak in his perfectly toned baritone, directing his voice to carry out the window.

There was silence, and then “Holy hell. I’ll be right there,” and then the scuffling of feet, the sound of the front apartment door clashing with keys and then opening, the clattering of wet snow-laden feet on stairs-

And a very merry banging of hands on the apartment door.

**you keep coming into the store i work at to buy wreaths, what are you doing with all of these wreaths?**

“Julian, isn’t this getting a bit ridiculous?” asked Garak, who was getting to get slightly concerned over the dearth of wreaths beginning to stack up in his boyfriend’s bathtub. “Where are you getting the materials from, anyway?”

“Worf’s doing part-time work at the local Christmas tree farm and gives me the leftover branches, so I’m making wreaths. It’s a bit like weaving.” Julian was sitting by the tub, pulling branches out of a giant plastic garbage bag. He also had a huge stack of broken wire hangers, likely purloined from the end-of-year university move-out curb piles that accumulated in mid-May. He intertwined branches and wire so that one couldn’t see the dull copper color underneath the dark green pine needles.

“I let it go after the first… dozen or so, but I’m not sure that these will all fit on our doors?” _And our neighbors’ doors and their relatives’ doors…_

“These aren’t for us, although we can keep one or two if you want.” He furrowed his brow, working on a particularly difficult wire bend.

“Excuse me? Then where are these to go?”

“The hospital. The children’s ward.” His face was obscured by pine needles and wires but his voice became much softer. “It’s awfully lonely, being a kid in a hospital on Christmas.”

Garak sensed that this was just not a random act of goodwill but stemmed from something in his lover’s past. He got up and settled down next to Julian, perching on the edge of the tub. “When were you-“

“I was six. My… operation was taking several months, and overlapped with Christmas. My parents were there but… I wasn’t really aware of what was going on.” His dexterous fingers wove more branches onto the bent hanger as his face was focused and tinged with sadness. “So since I’ve had the resources, I find ways to make wreaths and drop them off at the children’s ward.”

Garak looked at Julian for a moment, imagining a small, scared child in a hospital bed, in and out of consciousness, looking for cheer in a beige and white sterile nightmare, and finding none.

He reached out and took a handful of hangers and branches with determination. “Show me how to make them, Julian.”

Julian smiled and stretched out his current wreath. “You start by bending the wire like this…”

**you were walking in front of me when you tripped over your own foot and knocked over the christmas tree in the park. let me help you up and we’ll try to fix the damage**

“Holy shit,” whispered Julian, seeing the destruction that lay out before them. “I destroyed them all.”

Garak could not say anything to the contrary. Every single one of the twelve Christmas trees in Orion Park’s central circle had toppled over, crashed to the ground, decorations strewn everywhere, the once joyous space of Christmas cheer now a grim graveyard for angel Christmas tree toppers.

It had all happened so fast- Julian had been leaping around like a gazelle, trying to replicate the jumps of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Alpha City Ballet Company’s performance that they had just returned from. But, amongst the snow, he couldn’t see the tree lights that were strung along the ground, connecting all the trees, and in his forceful jumps, tripped on them. The strings between the trees, in a terrible flaw of Christmas engineering, were done in just the right way so that when _very very_ forcefully pulled on, all of the trees toppled over, tangling their lights together in holly jolly dance of death.

Garak suspected that, after this, next year’s trees would be better secured to the ground.

“Garak, we have to get them up and back before anyone sees us-“

“But it’s so cold-“ pouted Garak, looking around. Snow was still steadily falling, covering the corpses of the arboreal fallen Yuletide heroes. And they had planned a lovely night in after the ballet, with a mix of Cardassian winter solstice traditions (dumplings) and Federation Christmas traditions (mistletoe had been mentioned)…

Julian turned from the piney massacre to face Garak, his face stubbornly set. “Garak. Help me.”

As the boughs bent to the weight of snow, so did Garak to Julian’s will.

And so they went from tree to tree, struggling to lift up each one and set the Christmas tree stand properly. Garak frowned at the amount of snow getting on his coat but noticed that with every tree that rose back to its proper place in the circle, Julian got a little happier. This went on for over half an hour, pushing each tree back up and rearranging the lights to not tangle and pull down the rest again.

“Just one more…” wheezed Julian as he shoved the tree up. Garak didn’t have the heart to tell Julian that it was mostly him doing the work- Garak’s stout, solid musculature was far more effective at this sort of thing than Julian’s slim frame. But Julian was certainly helping Garak’s morale to complete this task without making too many cutting remarks about how someone else would likely come along and ruin it all.

“There!” With some final tinkering with the tree base, Julian stepped back and admired the circle. Sure, there were plastic ornaments strewn around, and more than one angel was buried in the snow to be discovered by a confused park worker when spring came around, but the trees were up, the lights were still twinkling, and while he could no longer really feel his fingers through his gloves, Julian was happy to have rectified his mistake.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked, admiring the shimmering effect of the lights on the snow.

“Indeed,” replied Garak, but when Julian turned, Garak was already smiling at him.  


End file.
